Dungeons requiring less people

[Plant]

Honestly think designing dungeons with a goal in the end is the way to go these days, while dungeons that starts with grinding and ends with grinding are falling off of favor. Why spend time grinding in a dungeon for hours when you can have fun in a dungeon that was designed to give a dungeon experience? I'm in support of these kinds of dungeons - they just provide superior party gameplay experience.

However, at the same time I don't think our current system isn't flawless. There are many ways that we can improve our current dungeon systems and learn from to make use of for future dungeons. My few gripes with them, while some already mentioned in previous replies, are:

1. All of these dungeons are concentrated and aimed for level 89+ in mind. Chances are you're facing none of these till maybe level 80 at the earliest if your entire party is geared enough.

2. Most high-end dungeons of this style requires way too much gears to finish at a reasonable time, or at all. Hi champs in Nydd/Mystic.

3. It's easy to miss gears from certain monsters especially if you're not stopping to grind/find them. Number of ways to fix this like maybe adjusting chances so that you can get at least one every run? Oka mentioned Thana, I'll mention Nydd. I have personally joined lots of Nyddhoggur Dungeon parties and have only seen Veteran Swords and Dragon Vests drop a number of times that I can count with a single hand. Probably seen more Proxies drop from Nydd in comparison.

4. Some of them require a cost or even a quest to access. Why? Quests aren't even mandatory so I may even end up leveling to 99 trans before I'm invited to a Nydd party, and then find out that I have not unlocked it from quests. Army Supply reduces the time investment but still doesn't solve the problem. Why not just add portals/NPCs at relevant places to warp to the places without any quest requirements? Do players really need to go through a questline to be delivered a dungeon? And why must a complete dungeon experience be stuck inside event bags that only a few number of people can get?

5. Lower-end dungeons of this style offer rewards that aren't enticing. If I can finish Octopus Cave or Thanatos Tower, high chances that I don't need gears from that dungeon on the character I'm joining anymore. But less so from Thanatos Tower because of Thanatos's drops being useful even at level 99 trans.

6. This number is specifically for Thanatos Tower which imho has the stupidest progression ever where each member of the whole party is required to solve dumb puzzles. This causes a problem where party members are not at the same pace and therefore will require some waiting in between. Whoever designed this quest have not experienced being stuck just because a member is stuck on a number puzzle for 30 minutes before being forced to ditch. For the love of Odin, just change this quest to update variables for everyone in the party when someone goes through a step.

---

7.

Lastly, the original topic: Party member count. Not everyone has the best gears like [insert some hardcore player who can solo dungeons] therefore you end up with a party needing many more roles. I honestly think this is more of a problem with horrible RO class design than dungeon design. Lots of the more modern game solves this by reducing the number of roles possible in the game while still maintaining unique design on each class, allowing you to go as anything as long as it fits the roles (like dps-tank-healer or something). However, that's not to say heRO needs a class redesign - I don't see it happening because [insert reason].

One way I can immediately think of right now is to reduce party member count (because I notice that most RO parties have always been crowds in your face), is to reduce spawn count in dungeons so that you're only dealing with one difficult monster at a time for the most part. I believe RO parties are optimized for dealing shit tons of stuff at the same time so with less but more difficult spawns in dungeons, RO parties can afford to kick off party members without significant time or risk increase, while allowing dungeons to stay difficult. Roles like a bragi or prof are only luxuries instead of necessities when maps are less mobby.

Another method I can guarantee to work is to design dungeons that isn't impossible without a champ. Inviting champ alone means inviting like five members because you're most likely going to be inviting four other roles (prof, bragi, pally, dancer) to go with it lol.